Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (131 page)

Mrs. Joyce, nevertheless, pitilessly disarranged it. In a moment the living picture was destroyed; the young ladies were called to their mother’s side; the child was placed between Valentine and Mrs. Peckover, and the important business of luncheon began in earnest.

It was wonderful to hear how Mr. Blyth talked; how he alternately glorified the clown’s wife for the punctual performance of her promise, and appealed triumphantly to the rector to say, whether he had not underrated rather than exaggerated little Mary’s beauty. It was also wonderful to see Mrs. Peckover’s blank look of astonishment when she found the rigid doctor of divinity, who would not so much as notice her curtsey, suddenly relax into blandly supplying her with everything she wanted to eat or drink. But a very much more remarkable study of human nature than either of these, was afforded by the grimly patronising and profoundly puzzled aspect of Vance, as he waited, under protest, upon a woman from a traveling circus. It is something to see the Pope serving the Pilgrims their dinner, during the Holy Week at Rome. Even that astounding sight, however, fades into nothing, as compared with the sublimer spectacle of Mr. Vance waiting upon Mrs. Peckover.

The rector, who was a sharp observer in his own quiet, unobtrusive way, was struck by two peculiarities in little Mary’s behavior during lunch. In the first place, he remarked with some interest and astonishment, that while the clown’s wife was, not unnaturally, very shy and embarrassed in her present position, among strangers who were greatly her social superiors, little Mary had maintained her self-possession, and had unconsciously adapted herself to her new sphere from the moment when she first entered the dining-room. In the second place, he observed that she constantly nestled close to Valentine; looked at him oftener than she looked at any one else; and seemed to be always trying, sometimes not unsuccessfully, to guess what he was saying to others by watching his expression, his manner, and the action of his lips. “That child’s character is no common one,” thought Doctor Joyce; “she is older at heart than she looks; and is almost as fond of Blyth already as he is of her.”

When lunch was over, the eldest Miss Joyce whispered a petition in her mother’s ear, “May Carry and I take the dear little girl out with us to see our gardens, mamma?”

“Certainly, my love, if she likes to go. You had better ask her — Ah, dear! dear! I forgot — I mean, write on her slate. It’s so hard to remember she’s deaf and dumb, when one sees her sitting there looking so pretty and happy. She seems to like the cake. Remind me, Emmy, to tie some up for her in paper before she goes away.”

Miss Emily and Miss Caroline went round to the child directly, and made signs for the slate. They alternately wrote on it with immense enthusiasm, until they had filled one side; signing their initials in the most business-like manner at the end of each line, thus: —

“Oh, do come and see my gardens. E. J.” — ”We will gather you such a nice nosegay. C. J.” — ”I have got some lovely little guinea-pigs. B. J.” — ”And Mark, our gardener, has made me a summer-house, with such funny chairs in it. C. J.” — ”You shall have my parasol to keep the sun off. B. J.” — ”And we will send Leo into the water as often as you like him to go. C. J.” — Thus they went on till they got to the bottom of the slate.

The child, after nodding her head and smiling as she read each fresh invitation, turned the slate over, and, with some little triumph at showing that she could write too, began slowly to trace some large text letters in extremely crooked lines. It took her a long time — especially as Mr. Blyth was breathlessly looking over her shoulder all the while — to get through these words: “Thank you for being so kind to me. I will go with you anywhere you like.”

In a few minutes more the two young ladies and little Mary were walking over the bright lawn, with Leo in close attendance, carrying a stick in his mouth.

Valentine started up to follow them; then appeared suddenly to remember something, and sat down again with a very anxious expression on his face. He and Doctor Joyce looked at one another significantly. Before breakfast, that morning, they had been closeted at a private interview. Throughout the conversation which then took place, Mr. Blyth had been unusually quiet, and very much in earnest. The doctor had begun by being incredulous and sarcastic in a good-humored way; but had ended by speaking seriously, and making a promise under certain conditions. The time for the performance of that promise had now arrived.

“You needn’t wait, Vance,” said the rector. “Never mind about taking the things away. I’ll ring when you’re wanted.”

Vance gloomily departed.

“Now the young people have left us, Mrs. Peckover,” said Doctor Joyce, turning to the clown’s wife, “there is a good opportunity for my making a proposition to you, on behalf of my old and dear friend here, Mr. Blyth, who, as you must have noticed, feels great sympathy and fondness for your little Mary. But, before I mention this proposal (which I am sure you will receive in the best spirit, however it may surprise you), I should wish — we should all wish, if you have no objection — to hear any particulars you can give us on the subject of this poor child. Do you feel any reluctance to tell us in confidence whatever you know about her?”

“Oh dear no, sir!” exclaimed Mrs. Peckover, very much amazed. “I should be ashamed of myself if I went making any objections to anything you wanted to know about little Mary. But it’s strange to me to be in a beautiful place like this, drinking wine with gentlefolks — and I’m almost afraid — ”

“Not afraid, I hope, that you can’t tell us what we are so anxious to know, quite at your ease, and in your own way?” said the rector, pleasantly. “Pray, Mrs. Peckover, believe I am sincere in saying that we meet on equal terms here. I have heard from Mr. Blyth of your motherly kindness to that poor helpless child; and I am indeed proud to take your hand, and happy to see you here, as one who should always be an honoured guest in a clergyman’s house — the doer of a good and charitable deed. I have always, I hope, valued the station to which it has pleased God to call me, because it especially offers me the privilege of being the friend of all my fellow-christians, whether richer or poorer, higher or lower in worldly rank, than am myself.”

Mrs. Peckover’s eyes began to fill. She could have worshipped Doctor Joyce at that moment.

“Mr. Blyth!” exclaimed Mrs. Joyce, sharply, before another word could be spoken — ”excuse me, Mr. Blyth; but really — ”

Valentine was trying to pour out a glass of sherry for Mrs. Peckover. His admiration of the doctor’s last speech, and his extreme anxiety to reassure the clown’s wife, must have interfered with his precision of eye and hand; for one-half of the wine, as he held the decanter, was dropping into the glass, and the other half was dribbling into a little river on the cloth. Mrs. Joyce thought of the walnut-wood table underneath, and felt half distracted as she spoke. Mrs. Peckover, delighted to be of some use, forgot her company manners in an instant, pulled out her red cotton pocket-handkerchief and darted at the spilt sherry. But the rector was even quicker with his napkin. Mrs. Peckover’s cheeks turned the colour of her handkerchief as she put it back in her pocket, and sat down again.

“Much obliged — no harm done — much obliged, ma’am,” said Doctor Joyce. “Now, Valentine, if you don’t leave off apologising, and sit down directly in that arm-chair against the wall, I shall take Mrs. Peckover into my study, and hear everything she has to say, at a private interview. There! we are all comfortable and composed again at last, and ready to be told how little Mary and the good friend who has been like a mother to her first met.”

Thus appealed to, Mrs. Peckover began her narrative; sometimes addressing it to the Doctor, sometimes to Mrs. Joyce, and sometimes to Valentine. From beginning to end, she was only interrupted at rare intervals by a word of encouragement, or sympathy, or surprise, from her audience. Even Mr. Blyth sat most uncharacteristically still and silent; his expression alone showing the varying influences of the story on him, from its strange commencement to its melancholy close.

“It’s better than ten years ago, sir,” began the clown’s wife, speaking first to Doctor Joyce, “since my little Tommy was born; he being now, if you please, at school and costing nothing, through a presentation, as they call it I think, which was given us by a kind patron to my husband. Some time after I had got well over my confinement, I was out one afternoon taking a walk with baby and Jemmy; which last is my husband, ma’am. We were at Bangbury, then, just putting up the circus: it was a fine large neighbourhood, and we hoped to do good business there. Jemmy and me and the baby went out into the fields, and enjoyed ourselves very much; it being such nice warm spring weather, though it was March at the time. We came back to Bangbury by the road; and just as we got near the town, we see a young woman sitting on the bank, and holding her baby in her arms, just as I had got my baby in mine.

“‘How dreadful ill and weak she do look, don’t she?’ says Emmy. Before I could say as much as ‘Yes,’ she stares up at us, and asks in a wild voice, though it wasn’t very loud either, if we can tell her the way to Bangbury workhouse. Having pretty sharp eyes of our own, we both of us knew that a workhouse was no fit place for her. Her gown was very dusty, and one of her boots was burst, and her hair was draggled all over her face, and her eyes was sunk in her head, like; but we saw somehow that she was a lady — or, if she wasn’t exactly a lady, that no workhouse was proper for her, at any rate. I stooped down to speak to her; but her baby was crying so dreadful she could hardly hear me. ‘Is the poor thing ill?’ says I. ‘Starving,’ says she, in such a desperate, fierce way, that it gave me a turn. ‘Is that your child?’ says I, a bit frightened about how she’d answer me. ‘Yes,’ she says in quite a new voice, very soft and sorrowful, and bending her face away from me over the child. ‘Then why don’t you suckle it?’ says I. She looks up at me, and then at Jenny and shakes her head, and says nothing. I give my baby to Jemmy to hold, and went and sat down by her. He walked away a little; and I whispered to her again, ‘Why don’t you suckle it?’ and she whispered to me, ‘My milk’s all dried up. I couldn’t wait to hear no more till I’d got her baby at my own breast.

“That was the first time I suckled little Mary, ma’am. She wasn’t a month old then, and oh, so weak and small! such a mite of a baby compared to mine!

“You may be sure, sir, that I asked the young woman lots of questions, while I was sitting side by side with her. She stared at me with a dazed look in her face, seemingly quite stupefied by weariness or grief, or both together. Sometimes she give me an answer and sometimes she wouldn’t. She was very secret. She wouldn’t say where she come from, or who her friends were, or what her name was. She said she should never have name or home or friends again. I just quietly stole a look down at her left hand, and saw that there was no wedding-ring on her finger, and guessed what she meant. ‘Does the father know you are wandering about in this way?’ says I. She flushes up directly; ‘No;’ says she, ‘he doesn’t know where I am. He never had any love for me, and he has no pity for me now. God’s curse on him wherever he goes!’ — ’Oh, hush! hush!’ says I, ‘don’t talk like that!’ ‘Why do you ask me questions?’ says she more fiercely than ever. ‘What business have you to ask me questions that make me mad?’ ‘I’ve only got one more to bother you with,’ says I, quite cool; ‘and that is, haven’t you got any money at all with you?’ You see, ma’am, now I’d got her child at my own bosom, I didn’t care for what she said, or fear for what she might do to me. The poor mite of a baby was sure to be a peacemaker between us, sooner or later.

“It turned out she’d got sixpence and a few half-pence — not a farthing more, and too proud to ask help from any one of her friends. I managed to worm out of her that she had run away from home before her confinement, and had gone to some strange place to be confined, where they’d ill-treated and robbed her. She hadn’t long got away from the wretches who’d done it. By the time I’d found out all this, her baby was quite quiet, and ready to go to sleep. I gave it her back. She said nothing, but took and kissed my hand, her lips feeling like burning coals on my flesh. ‘You’re kindly welcome,’ says I, a little flustered at such a queer way of thanking me. ‘Just wait a bit while I speak to my husband.’ Though she’d been and done wrong, I couldn’t for the life of me help pitying her, for her fierce ways. She was so young, and so forlorn and ill, and had such a beautiful face (little Mary’s is the image of it, ‘specially about the eyes), and seemed so like a lady, that it was almost a sin, as I thought, to send her to such a place as a workhouse.

“Well: I went and told Jemmy all I had got out of her — my own baby kicking and crowing in my arms again, as happy as a king, all the time I was speaking. ‘It seems shocking,’ says I, ‘to let such as her go into a workhouse. What had we better do?’ — Says Jemmy, ‘Let’s take her with us to the circus and ask Peggy Burke.’

“Peggy Burke, if you please, sir, was the finest rider that ever stepped on a horse’s back. We’ve had nothing in our circus to come near her, since she went to Astley’s. She was the wildest devil of an Irish girl — oh! I humbly beg your pardon, sir, for saying such a word; but she really
was
so wild, I hope you’ll excuse it. She’d go through fire and water, as they say, to serve people she liked; but as for them she didn’t, she’d often use her riding-whip among ‘em as free as her tongue. That cowardly brute Jubber would never have beaten my little Mary, if Peggy had been with us still! He was so frightened of her that she could twist him round her finger; and she did, for he dursn’t quarrel with the best rider in England, and let other circuses get hold of her. Peggy was a wonderful sharp girl besides, and was always fond of me, and took my part; so when Jemmy said he thought it best to ask her what we had better do, you may be sure that I thought it best too. We took the young woman and the baby with us to the circus at once. She never asked any questions; she didn’t seem to care where she went, or what she did; she was dazed and desperate — a sight, Ma’am, to make your heart ache.